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Better resources for general practitioners would ease the pressure on stressed doctors as well as the overstretched hospital system, GPs say.
This week, doctors in Whanganui said a shortage of specialists at the local hospital was putting additional pressure on GPs already under strain.
They spoke out after Health NZ asked them to consider "all options of care" before referring patients to specialist orthopaedic care.
General Practitioners Aotearoa interim chair Dr Buzz Burrell said it showed Te Whatu Ora was "wilfully" ignoring the problem, which was not enough GPs across the motu.
"Te Whatu Ora is implying that if the hospital had more staff, there would not be a problem. The opposite is the case.
"If the community had an adequately staffed, resourced and funded general practice workforce, there would not be a problem in Whanganui's base hospital."
He said studies showed that increasing care in primary health reduced the number of hospital admissions.
The timing of Te Whatu Ora's request was unfortunate, Burrell added.
"The secondary sector has reduced capacity to help [and] we've got a primary sector with not enough GPs. [So] for the government to be setting targets is naive on a good day, dumb on a bad day.
"The only way you can meet those targets is by underservicing or not delivering the care that's needed - and that is heartbreaking for a first world country, we should not be seeing that."
GPs felt frustrated, he said. "[But] that's a polite synonym."
A Health NZ spokesperson told RNZ that general practice and wider primary care were the "cornerstones" of the health system, and "growing the GP workforce" was a priority.
Health NZ had several initiatives underway to support general practice and wider primary care, the spokesperson added.
They included:
- A $9100 accommodation allowance for General Practice Education Programme trainees living within 30km of their rural GP practice
- Strengthening the GP training pathway and increasing the number of GPs trained per year to 300 by 2026, with a focus on training more Māori and Pacific GPs
- Providing funding to general practices that offered community-based placements for post-graduate first- and second-year interns.
"As this work is being undertaken in the face of a national and international shortage of GPs, it will take time to increase numbers in New Zealand," the spokesperson said.
"We are committed to working closely with general practice to address the pressures and complexities they are facing so they can continue to provide vital care to their patients and communities."